Do you form whole sentences in your mind as you go about your day.
An essay that runs through your head in a gentle voice as you form and reform commentary. Not like hearing voices. This voice is your own voice, searching for just the right word with just the right sound. A running dialogue as though there is a friend next to you who listens and nods. Yes, yes. I know. And you want to get it just right so they understand.
Do you frame and reframe pictures thinking why did you leave Camera House inside. Taking pictures with your minds shutter. Click. Reframe, tighten, click. Zoom. Tuck. Adjust. Wish I had my camera! Oh I know you all do that!
Do you have a soundtrack that plays in the basement of your mind, often just out of earshot like the whine of a mosquito in the next room but sometimes it escapes through the smudged door of your lips as a hum, and other times as a verse of a song and other times is finished with a shout of “Get behind you useless excuse of a dog! Good Boy Ton Ton. Good boy. Sit Boo Boo …SIT!
I hope it is not only me who does these things.
Do you imagine meeting people you have not seen for years, maybe they are even dead already and then you have ordinary little conversations with them about cabbages or planting trees or cakes or how you both despise pink icing, but there are no sounds only smiles on your lips that someone else may interpret as happiness but really they are just smiles.
Do you look at the sky and see the vapor trails of planes flying so high you cannot hear the engines. Carrying all those little people and all their important dreams and they do not know that you are watching the vapor tail of their plane and you wish that soon it will be you going home. But home is a vapor trail. Nebulous in its whimsical sandcastle construction. Home is not where the heart is, home is where the child was.
Do you ever think what the hell am I going to make for tea tonight. It feels like every single day of my life since I was 15 I have had to decide what to have for dinner, plan it, time it so it is all hot and cooked at the same time and on the table for dinner when someone else wants it. Because I don’t. And then clean up after it. Of course I have not had to cook every night but sometimes it FEELS like it. It is not the cooking that bothers me it is the deciding WHAT to cook. Do you ever think to yourself, if I have to do this one more time I am carting myself off the loony bin. i will make the call. I will wrap myself in the straight jacket. At least they give you four square meals a day there and then you wonder why they are called ‘square’ how can a meal be square. Does it come on a square plate? Is the food arranged in a square? Why four? Are you mad already?
Then you think something else but it is so fleeting that it is gone before you can take a mental note but who reads mental notes anyway. They perch yellowly, stuck to the walls of your brain, fluttering just out of reach. On the tip of your tongue like litmus. And then do you think I better not be thinking idle thoughts, that would be a terrible waste of time. The devil makes work for idle hands and idle thoughts seem like a natural extension.
And you try again to think about what to make for dinner and end up making an apple pie because you have apples. And since the oven is on you make some bread as well.
Do you ever think like that or is it just me. Do you ever wonder, like I do, why my food shots just look like food. They have none of the sharp moody charisma of the real food shots.
Do you ever think about a person then wonder if they are thinking about you?
Do you ever wonder why the males of the species in the animal and bird kingdoms are the most flamboyant and colourful but not in the human kingdom.
Do you ever think in words. Do you dream in colour. I dreamed once that a man gave me a gate. A big wide farm gate. This is an old dream. I walked down a pot holey country road in my city and short skirt carrying a wide green heavy gate. Though in the dream it felt more unwieldy than heavy. 
Askance. That is the word that accompanies your look. You look at me askance, but you see – it is OK not to get it right all the time. It is OK to sit down and think what am I doing. Am I doing it right. Can I do it better. Do I need to bother. It is OK to say – what do you think? It is!
Are you sometimes very tired as the autumn approaches. The time for moving animals off to the abbatoir, the weight of the choices that are mine. Their eyes sit in my eyes. We blink. The time for closing the gardens and windows. Ticking down into our hibernations. Our caves full of wine and tomatoes. The time for counting your stores and laying in the layers, hoping there is enough.
Do you sometimes wish you could undo life’s silver Thought Domes, guiltily clicking the snaps apart with deft fingers, and slide the thinking off for a minute and lay it folded neatly on the chair to breathe on its own for a wee while and then you step out of your thoughts so you can be the light again, just for a moment. In the moment. Just for a moment.
Good morning.
I hope you have a lovely day. I do.
your friend on the farm, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
133 responses to “Do you ever think in words?”
I think, spending so much time in solitary pursuits gives rise to the mental conversations and meandering thoughts. I do believe it proves you are comfortable with that trio – me, myself and I. While I never want to give up ‘my John’, I’m reassured knowing I’m OK, me by myself. I find it also leads to many solutions to problems and ideas for improvements, sometimes things just have to cook in your brain for awhile.
Sometimes even when you know you are doing the right thing and doing it properly and well it still weighs heavily and disturbs. When & if it doesn’t is the time to be afraid.
And oh Lord yes, please just tell me what to make!!!!!
*If* it can truly be said that your photos of food simply look like food and not like glossy representations of food, why then, that’s precisely why I find yours more beautiful and compelling than that other sort. Just as your ability to think in words that feel almost as though they have welled up directly inside me makes your writing more compelling than that self-conscious drivel so often found in pretentious, if well-meaning, places. I thank you for being a lovely, thoughtful, big-hearted and hard working woman, and in that, I thank you for being yourself, and letting us know you *as* yourself. Nothing could be lovelier.
xo
Thank you kathryn but I am only small, often I am writing thinking.. surely this is rubbish, surely people will not read this, but trusting you to understand what I mean is the best decision I make. Because you do. many of you.. understand. take care.. c
Living alone, I talk to myself all day and sometimes half the night, The chat is deep within my head with no need for sound. I find myself walking downhill to the shops or for a walk in the park with a great big Cheshire Cat smile on my face. passers by must wonder what I have been up to! 😉
I adore the paragraph about vapor trails and home. I want to steal and share it with all my friends, many who are away from the home or land of their childhoods. You will have full credit!
steal away honey, i don’t mind at all!.. c
Good to see I’m not the only one! 🙂 I constantly have conversations going through my head. Sometimes it can be distracting. This is a wonderful post.
It’s the first day of Autumn!
Today as I work on my little homestead you will be the friend that walks along beside me an nods her head in agreement and chuckles with me at the antics of my little herd of New
Zealands. Each one with its own personality.
The frost has come early in Myskoka and I have to rush and get all our tomatoes out o the garden. They are still green and I will have to wrap a bushel if them for storage in the cook of the basement. The rest are going into chutney.
Your daily prose and bright commentary put a smile on my face each day.
I will be following you on line and thinking about all your whimsical mental meandering observations on life all day.
Yes, I have them too.
Sincerely, Cindy
Good morning Cindy and welcome to the Lounge of Comments. Your own little homestead sounds delightful but frosts! already? I am also making chutney today, we should compare notes.. have a lovely day, at least if you have a frost you will have a beautiful day.. c
Yes, there are always words in my head, (I talk to myself–a LOT) and dream in color. I think this is part of being human. Your food pictures are more appetizing than those found in glossy magazines. The love you put into everything you do is tangible. Fall/winter tend to bring us to a time of slowing down, reflection. I certainly don’t envy you the task of raising your animals and delivering them the a abbatoir; I can only imagine the thankful hearts on the receiving end of your special deliveries. You make a difference in so many lives, all around the world, with your special touch. Be not weary in well-doing…
This is the EXACT post I needed to read today, and for that I thank you. You have made me smile, and I sorely needed a smile today. Your reverie made me feel human again.
Oh good! I thought it was only me who does this – woohoo, we are all normal then.
🙂 Mandy xo
Thinking in words is the only way I know how to think. I can remember the words I thought when I was almost three and Daddy told me to leave the white do alone, to let it sleep. I thought, “He will go behind the house soon. I can push the dog then.” Daddy did go around the corner, out of sight, and I pushed the dog to make it get up. The dog lunged at me and took me by my upper arm, not biting hard, but shaking me roundly. The dog was just correcting me, but it got beat. I was all scratched up from the dog’s teeth! I cried for a long time, but I thought, “I will never get near any dog ever again. Mostly, I have listened to my voice since then.
I told my husband that I hated figuring out what to cook each night for our three children and us. He was shocked, saying, “I thought you liked to cook.” I had to explain that cooking was fine. It was just having to think about it and figuring it out. I begged him to tell me what he wanted me to cook that night. His answer, “Anything is okay.” He never got it.
Dog bites are terrifying, no wonder you remember! and i had to laugh at your exchange with your husband.. i understand completely! Thank you for the great comment.. c
Okay, I’m a little late on this one, but it’s beautifully written. And I want to borrow that line: Home is not where the heart is, home is where the child was. I think I could do a post on that line…
Words are ours to share.. Let me know when you write that post, i would love to read it .. c